[11] Eventually, she started playing with longtime associate Beth Heinberg on piano, with David Michael Curry (Empty House Cooperative, Willard Grant conspiracy, Will Oldham) soon joining them on the viola.
[12] The title of the album came from an old copy of Frederic Ramsey, Jr.’s Been Here and Gone (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960) on the Southern musical landscape of spirituals, blues, and jazz, that Zedek had been gifted by a friend.
[13] According to Andi Rowlands, the album was "supposedly inspired by the cabaret-style shows [Zedek’s previous band] Come played between their third and fourth records,"[14] Near-Life Experience and Gently, Down the Stream.
"[19] Andi Rowlands observed that Been Here and Gone seems the mature and reminiscent record of an aged career," drawing comparisons to Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now and Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, stating that it sounded "as if [Zedek] were singing indie rock’s torch song.
magazine, asserts that Zedek has "discovered a greater intensity at a lower volume," drawing comparisons between her solo work and that of "Nick Cave, Edith Piaf and Marianne Faithfull.